LAST YEAR, I remember writing about the New South China Mall, the world’s biggest mall and quite possibly the world’s biggest waste of space.
The New South China Mall was built on sprawling farmland with no access to people who could actually afford to shop there. Its developers said that the mall was “too big to fail,” but surprise, surprise – it failed.
The 892km² mall, which has a capacity for 2,350 stores, only has 47 running – the most popular one being McDonald’s – and even then, it’s only visited on special occasions when the local farmers want to celebrate something special like a good harvest. Poor McDonald’s employees in the middle of nowhere…
The Chinese have not learned their lesson. They’re doing it again – and this time, they’re going all-out. The New Century Global Center is the world’s largest building and it is 330-meter tall and offers 1.7-million square meters of floor space.
For comparison, Bacolod City is 162km² – which means that ten-and-a-half Bacolod cities could fit inside that one building, theoretically.
Needless to say, that is one big mall. There are 400km² of shopping space, offices, conference rooms, a university complex, two commercial centers, two five star hotels and an IMAX cinema. And this time, they built it in a city. Chengdu, China is the proud host to the world’s largest structure. The marine-themed building is also home to a 5km² artificial beach and an indoor “Mediterranean Village.”
But as they say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Imagine a city: a large, bustling metropolis inhabited by thousands, or millions. Those people are overseen by a mayor – and the mayor is in charge of things like order, job allocation, waste management, water, food and electricity for that city. Under him is a city council that serves as the voice of the people, telling him what needs to be done in the city.
The city needs to think about problems like health, crime, disaster management, and structural integrity – now imagine all of that in a single building bigger than a city, absent a standing police department, a fire brigade, or hospitals, all under one extremely large roof – that, ladies and gentlemen, is a recipe for disaster.